


Don't Hold Back (Just Run It)

by Raisintorte



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mission Fic, Sideways, Space Flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raisintorte/pseuds/Raisintorte
Summary: When all else fails, kill it with fire. That usually works, right?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewhiterose3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhiterose3/gifts).



“John, are you sure that is the wisest course of action?” Lucy's voice rang out through the ship rather insistently. 

“A little busy here, Lucy. Trust me.  I got you.” Johnny ran his hand through his hair as he frantically tried to figure out how to stop the almost living foam type stuff that was apparently multiplying and working its way through Lucy’s systems. Hopefully before it shut off Lucy, the ship, life support, and all of the other critical functions one needed to fly in space.  Which would be rather unfortunate, since they were currently more than an hour from the nearest safe space to land. “Damnit, I hate this freaky stuff.  Give me some techno robots, or an invasion of nanites, or even some general hand to hand combat, but no more of this almost living goop stuff.” 

“John, I should warn you that that my primary systems are close to going offline.  I estimate only 15 minutes before I begin to lose power.  I am currently diverting all power to keep up life support and other critical systems, but soon they will be compromised.”

“Thank you for the ever helpful update of no good news, Lucy.  Working as fast I can here.”  Johnny rummaged through his tools looking for a blow torch.  Cutting it didn’t work, water made it grow faster, cutting off its air supply had no effect, and he couldn't exactly rip it out of the system, since it was you, know, living foam and all.  So, killing it with fire was his next option. 

Johnny knew he should have been suspicious of this transport warrant.  It seemed too good to be true.  Too much joy for too little work.  “Deliver some foam from Westerly to a science post on Leith they said, it will only take a few hours they said, easy joy they said.  And now the foam is trying to invade and take over the ship.  Stupid.”  Dav and Dutch were off chasing a different warrant on Westerly.  Both jobs had seemed simple enough that they decided to divide and conquer to try and make themselves a little more flush.  Johnny had some upgrades he was planning for Lucy and they needed a good haul.  

Johnny finally found the elusive blow torch and started slowly heating foam in a non-critical system with his fingers crossed that it would do the trick.  After a few seconds of heat, the foam singed around the edges and shrank away from the flame.  Now he just had to find a way to just deploy this fix to all of Lucy’s infected systems.  

“John, whatever it is you are doing you need to stop now.  I do not think the foam likes it and it is trying to shut off the power to the systems to stop you.  I am going to have to go into low power mode to keep pressure.”  Lucy’s tone never changed, but Johnny thought she sounded almost distressed. 

“Lucy, what do you mean it’s trying to shut off power to your systems? Are you telling me you think that it is attacking a particular system?”  Johnny ran to the part of the ship that housed Lucy’s main core.

“Yes, John.  I do believe that it is learning how I work as it winds its way through the walls and my systems and it is specifically targeting the section off the ship that you are currently in.”  The one good thing was that Lucy’s voice followed him wherever he was on the ship.  

“Well isn’t that just peachy.  Well, Lucy, fire clearly works, any ideas on how to burn the foam out of the ship without destroying you and killing me?”  Johnny shook his head in frustration as he grabbed a pad to try and run a diagnostic to figure out what the foam was doing to Lucy.  Sentient foam.  Only he would pick up a cake warrant that was for the transport of sentient foam.  Johnny bet stuff like this never happened on Fancy’s ship.  Not that he wanted to be on a team with Fancy, but man, he would just like one warrant that didn’t go completely and unexpectedly sideways on him. 

“I don’t know, John, and you only have about 7 minutes left before my power becomes too unstable to maintain life support and pressurization.” Lucy helpfully updated him on the time until his demise. 

“Helpful as always, Lucy.  Damnit.”  Johnny threw the pad across the room in frustration.  There had to be a way to burn the foam out the system.  Wait, he didn’t need actual fire.  The foam started shrinking back before the flames touched it, it didn’t like the heat.

“Lucy, I’m going to need you to divert all power to your heating system and turn the heat up as high as you can.”   

“But, John, based on my calculations, the heat from the torch was approximately 250 degrees before the foam started to show any sign of weakening.  The foam has thoroughly invaded almost all of my systems and wiring throughout the entire ship and there would be no safe space for you to stay while I heated it out.  I can’t save myself and kill you John.” 

“Lucy, who says I have to stay on the ship while you cook this stuff?  I’m going to hop out the cargo bay door in a life suit, you cook the foam, and when we are free and clear, you come back around and get me.”  Johnny raced to put a life suit on.  By his calculation they had about 60 seconds left before Lucy started to irreversibly fail and she was going to need all of the power she could muster to burn out the evil sentient foam.  

“That sounds good, John.  It is making its way to my primary system.  I would advise the sooner you can get out of the ship, the better.  I will start the process of turning on the heaters.”

“Sounds good Lucy.  When I say go, open the airlock and heat this sucker up.”  Johnny finished putting on the suit and ran to the airlock. “Go!”  As soon as Johnny finished shouting, Lucy opened the door and he jumped out the back of the ship and started free floating in space.  By his estimate, assuming Lucy was successful, it would take about 10 minutes to safely bake out the foam.  Johnny watched as the ship and Lucy floated away from him and marked the time on his watch.  It was going to be a very, very long 10 minutes.  And when they was safely back on Westerly, Johnny was going to talk to Dutch about taking sketchy company transport warrants that seemed to good to be true.  

After what felt like almost an eternity, and was in reality only 9 minutes, Johnny saw the ship heading back to pick him up. He smiled as he thought about Lucy beating that foam.  As the ship got closer, a retractor came out of the back and Johnny grabbed on and pulled himself to the airlock door.   He knocked twice and it opened up.

“That’s my girl, Lucy!” Johnny whooped as he started taking off the life suit.

“Yes, John.  I was able to melt and purge all of the foam from my wiring and systems.  I am running several diagnostics now to make sure my systems are all okay, but I believe no lasting damage was done.”  As Lucy finished updating John, he was already grabbing a pad to run his own diagnostics to make sure his girl was okay.  “Oh and John?  I used my vacuum system to suck all of the powder left behind by the disintegrated foam.  It’s located in the aft filter.  You should be able to put that in a jar to complete your warrant.”  Johnny thought it almost sounded like Lucy was smiling as she finished speaking.  That was his Lucy, always looking out for him.  

After Johnny finished making sure that all of Lucy’s systems were running 100%, he went to the filter, and just like Lucy said, there was a nice pile of powder.  It probably wasn’t what the scientist wanted, but he was a RAC agent and a RAC agent always delivered on his warrant.  The warrant is all. 

“Alright Lucy, let’s hope for an uneventful end to this ride and a peaceful trip back to Westerly.  Since you were so awesome, I’ll let you run the statistics on Dutch and Dav’s warrant and how you think it’s going.”  Johnny started cleaning up the mess he made while he was trying to save Lucy earlier. 

“Well, you said it was a level four warrant for a thief who stole from the Company mines. But I have no details regarding the thief's history.   I am going to need more data to fully come to a proper analysis of their expected success rate.”  Johnny smiled as Lucy kept going on and calculating different probabilities and scenarios that could play out with Dav and Dutch’s warrant.  Johnny knew they would be successful because that is how it usually turned out when those two worked together, but Johnny liked it sometimes when it was just him and Lucy.  He would have liked it if it had been a bit more peaceful, but so long as he and Lucy emerged in one piece and the warrant was technically executed, that was a win in his book. 

“Now, Lucy, you have to factor in that Dutch is mad at Dav for what happened on Leith last week executing the farm warrant.”  Johnny finished cleaning up the last of his mess and headed to the pilot's seat to sit out the rest of the flight in peace with Lucy while debating statistics.   All in all, not a bad flight. A little sentient foam never hurt anyone.  

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to my ever wonderful to be named later betas.


End file.
